The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

IMDb plot summary: A young girl separated from her lover by war faces a life-altering decision.
Directed by Jacques Demy. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, and Marc Michel.

This is a movie I've been curious but cautious about for some time. I love musicals but hate the French New Wave, so combining the two could have yielded a disappointingly disastrous result. To my surprise (and relief), I enjoyed this quite a bit. It's entirely sung through, but it's interesting to compare it to other sung-through musicals, such as early operettas or modern rock operas, which have a *lot* of individual unique songs. I'm not sure I could pinpoint more than one or two individual numbers here, but that gives the film a more obvious flow more resembling a non-singing drama. The characters just happened to be saying their lines to music, that's all. It is a charming little musical that's very unique in its genre.

4 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg > Office Space
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg > Soapdish
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg < A Man for All Seasons
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg < Seven Samurai
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg > How to Train Your Dragon
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg > The Basketball Diaries
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg < The Invisible Man
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg < We're Not Married!
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg < The Adventures of Robin Hood
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg > Fences
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg < The Pirates of Penzance

Final spot: #518 out of 2567.